23/05/2010

Everything changed today: at a little after seven this morning, a new London Overground train left Brockley station for the first time.

There are few round these parts who haven't been getting slightly giddy about the transformation of the old East London Line from a little-used anomaly - I've been going to Shoreditch nearly every day for the past ten years and I've still never located the station that used to serve as the northern terminus - into a genuinely useful artery that provides north and south Londoners - and even the good burghers of Croydon - with direct access to docklands, the City (ish) and funky East London. It means Brockley now appears on the London tube map. Most of all, though, it means I can get to and from Tayyabs in no time.

I realise, though, that there will be some out there whose life isn't ruled by lamb chops and seekh kebabs (poor fools), and for them, the appearance of Brockley on the tube map will trigger idle curiosity rather than fevered anticipation. For their benefit, then, I offer the following round-up of the culinary highlights in this unsung corner of London.

Around the station

Descend from the shabby portakabin that is Brockley station (no gleaming new architecture on this stretch of the line I'm afraid) onto Coulgate Street, home of the often life-saving Speedicars and two neighbouring coffee options: Broca and Browns of Brockley, the first, a hippyish worthy kind of place (they have a brilliant organic food hall over on the over side of the tracks), the second a bit more of a funky deli (although they've recently moved squarely towards the coffee-shop and dropped most of the produce lines). Both do really good coffee if you need reviving after the journey.

Bear right at Browns and you'll bump into The Brockley Barge. It's a Weatherspoons. That's probably all you need to know. But assuming you can tear yourself from the siren temptation of cheap lager and house doubles, it's worth looking in at Degustation, an excellent little French outlet over the road. Lots of charcuterie, good fresh bread, a lot of jars and cans familiar from French supermarkets and a great selection of carefully sourced French wine. This stretch of Coulgate Street is also home to a jerk chicken place I confess I haven't tried yet and a well-regarded Vietnamese take-away.

Brockley Road

Step onto the main drag of Brockley Road and you're confronted with the first of a seemingly endless number of fried chicken establishments. I can't comment on the quality - I'm not sure what I'd be comparing it with - but the kebab shop a couple of doors down is pretty good and the Essence of India is a reliable if unshowy take-away option. There's more to Brockley than take-aways, though, and round the corner into Harefield Road you'll find The Orchard, a relative newcomer that's somewhere between a neighbourhood restaurant serving decent gastropub fare and the kind of wine bar/cum cafe where yummy mummies hang out during the day (more on them shortly). It's a welcome addition to the area and one hopes it fares better than a number of other failed ventures that have occupied the same spot over the past few years.

At this point things appear to dry up, but it's worth pressing on towards Crofton Park. In fact this is a recurring theme: Brockley Road is a long, drawn out affair with a few random points of interest along the way. It's the American football of thoroughfares.

The next flurry of commercial establishments includes what appears to be a popular local Thai restaurant, almost certainly some more fried chicken, at least one bookmaker and Brockley Mess, another newish establishment and certainly another welcome addition to the local scene. Part gallery and part upmarket cafe it does a good breakfast and looks after the rest of those yummy mummies very well indeed.

Crofton Park

Purists will argue that this is falling out of the Brockley brief slightly - Crofton Park has its own station after all - but for the purposes of this post I'm going to treat anything on Brockley Road as fair game. So in the knot of businesses around Crofton Park station (17 minutes from Victoria, apparently, but not on the tube map so will probably destined to remain invisible to most Londoners) you'll find the famous Rivoli Ballroom, a couple of local supermarkets and two decent eating options. Jam Circus is a popular pub/bar in the same mould as The Orchard but with much more heritage. Decent steaks and other gastropub grub feature on the menu and it's a regular live music venue.

And over the road is Mr Lawrence, one of the treasures of the area. It's actually a pair of businesses, an independent wine merchant on one side and an unreconstructed wine bar on the other. Don't be put off by the anti-shoplifter gate in the shop: once you're past that you'll find a fantastic selection of spirits, beers and wines. The emphasis is on France: Mr Lawrence, who you'll usually find behind the bar next door, sources much of it himself. The bar does tapas-style bar snacks and a few more substantial dishes but the emphasis is on helping him reduce his stock levels by emptying bottles into tiny glasses that probably haven't been replaced since the seventies. A perfect spot to finish an evening.

Also in this neck of the woods, if you can find it, is Peter James, a very good, old-fashioned family butchers.

Honor Oak Park

If you have the stamina (and can escape Mr Lawrence's gravitational pull), it's definitely worth pushing on down to the far end of Brockley Road. Or, of course, you can stay on the shiny new train for an extra stop and go to Honor Oak Park station. There's a couple of decent places to eat and drink around the station apparently but I haven't had the pleasure: by the time I've made it down this far I'm only really interested in either Italian or Indian. The first takes the form of Le Querce, home of excellent ice cream, a bewildering number of daily specials, home-cured bresaola and dangerous grappa. And at the same latitude you'll find Babur, possibly the only genuine culinary reason for visiting this neck of the woods. Named London's best inexpensive restaurant by Harden's last year, Babur does refined, well-flavoured dishes from all around India and regularly has regional or seasonal themes. Definitely worth a trip. One day I may even get round to reviewing it properly. I've only been here eight and half years...

Your final port of call on this tour of Brockley (verging on Forest Hill by now) is The Honor Oak, a decent modern pub right at the end of the main drag. A good looking menu meets the needs of a youngish clientele and there's often food stalls out front.

So that's it. I'm acutely aware this has been a very selective journey, focusing only on the options along Brockley Road but these are the places most obviously made accessible by the new tube stations. Other local highlights include a shiny new gastropub (The Talbot) and the perennially popular Meze Mangal, but these are both marginally better served by St Johns station.

But even this brief round-up reinforces the fact that there's more variety and quality to be found in SE4 than first impressions might suggest. You won't find a Starbucks (thank god), and you will be distracted by more chicken shacks than is strictly necessary, but there is plenty out there, much of which has opened relatively recently. Here's hoping the influx of new visitors brought by the new trains will cause this trend to continue.

13/05/2010

Regular readers (I know you're out there somewhere) may have noticed I've dined a few times of late with one Chris Pople of Cheese and Biscuits fame (and I mean fame - he's the current go-to man for news and radio comment on the food blogging phenomenon). I'd like to take this opportunity to scotch any rumours... he's far too male for my tastes. He does, though, have a knack for snagging reservations at the hottest new restaurants, and I'm quite happy to tag along when I get the chance. So when he got in touch on Sunday suggesting dinner the following day at a place called Bar Boulud I was immediately intrigued.

Neither Chris nor the third member of the party hadn't heard of Daniel Boulud before but both had seen the buzz about his place on Twitter and read up on his back-story; for me it was the other way round: I'd taken my eye off the rumour mill so didn't know about his London debut but I knew a bit about Daniel Boulud, or at least the New York restaurant that takes his first name. Once I'd made the connection I was up for it like a shot.

Bar Boulud is to be found in some newly snazzed-up rooms in the lower reaches of the Mandarin Oriental. This is a hotel a mere precious stone's throw from Harrods so it's interesting to find such an accessible and affordable dining option among such exclusive, expensive surroundings. Later this year the same hotel will be home to Heston Blumenthal's first London foray, and although it seems unlikely he'll be indulging in quite the same level of expensive whimsy he does so well at The Fat Duck, I'm willing to bet you won't be able to get a burger and chips for twelve quid. You can in Bar Boulud.

And what's more you should: the burgers were among the highlights of a fantastic first Bar Boulud experience. Before them, though, came a sharing platter of charcuterie, patés and terrines. This was a generous portion for £14. I'd been angling for the bigger platter but, with the boudin blanc we ordered alongside, this was plenty for three. Just as well I was talked down: the restaurant had Googled Chris's name (either before or after the we got the cameras out, I'm not sure) and decided we merited special treatment, in this case a chat with Daniel himself and a few bonus dishes for us to try.

Anyway, of the cold meat selection the highlights were probably the jellied pulled rabbit and a lamb terrine that had distinct Tayyabs overtones. Never a bad thing. The boudin was excellent too: pillowy in texture and delicately peppery.

The first freebie was a block each of rillon: slow cooked smoked pork belly that was beautifully tender but with fantastically bacony crunch.

The mains were also spot on. Chris was momentarily distracted by some complimentary boudin noir and feeling more than a little daunted by all the special treatment (a discomfort henceforth to be known as the freebie-jeebies) so I snaffled a bit of his roast chicken with wild garlic. And it was good. Decent roast chicken that actually tastes of chicken is a rare thing indeed a restaurant. Almost as rare, in fact, as coq au vin, which was my choice. This was the real deal: three chunkly pieces of leg and thigh falling off the bone but still juicy, an inky black sauce and (I suspect) more of that rillon as part of the garniture. On the side a little pot of exceptional spätzle that made the waiter come over all unnecessary when I was ordering.

Dan had the piggie burger. It's odd to see burgers on a menu that's otherwise so relentlessly French but let's face it: the French know about both meat and sandwiches so why shouldn't they be able to perfect a burger? Turns out they can. Perfect pinkness, perfect seasoning, perfect fries, perfect bun: this was surely the perfect burger... Until we got to try another freebie, "The Frenchie", which ticked all of these boxes but also some another ones we hadn't considered before. Some umami alchemy involving confit pork and Morbier cheese rendered this the best burger I can recall tasting. And I've had a few.

After all this, we were too stuffed to contemplate pudding so we allowed ourselves to be upsold some macarons with our coffee instead. The strawberry ones were a bit jammy dodger for my taste but the hazelnut versions were cracking.

We were lucky enough to have a second chat with Daniel, who won't be in town for long, and the general manager, in whose safe hands the place will soon be left. We may have been getting special treatment because of our alleged importance as food bloggers but they both seemed genuinely delighted with our positive reaction to the food, interested in anything we thought could be improved and generally thoroughly enthusiastic about what had clearly been a very successful opening week. We were even shown the guest list for a "little gathering" of fellow chefs who were coming over later that evening: Robuchon, Atherton, Darroze, Hartnett, Blumenthal, Blanc, Wareing, Galvin, Bossi... There were 40-odd in total and it was like a Who's Who of current UK cheffery. With Gary Rhodes and Brian Turner thrown in. Boulud is already joining this list of household foodie names and on the evidence of this first meal it's easy to see why.

15/02/2010

I've still never been to Theo Randall. I'm sure it's wonderful and everything but I'm afraid the dodgy treatment meted out almost exactly two years ago still leaves a rather nasty taste in the mouth. That's not to say I'll never go, but it's unlikely to find itself high on the list - and it certainly didn't feature when it came to select a venue when Valentine's Day came around this year.

It felt right to go out for dinner on Valentine's Day this year, more so perhaps than other years, when I've usually been put off by resentment of its artificiality and a certainty that I'd be ripped off by greedy restaurateurs. But when you're living - and now working - together, and spending more than a little of your spare collective time messing about in the kitchen, it's true that a decent excuse for a night out that features someone else slaving over the hot stove is always welcome. It was also a Sunday this year, which seemed to present at least some possibility that West End restaurants and bars wouldn't be crammed to the rafters with credulous mugs paying through the nose. Plus we were celebrating the start of a new era and the rather rash purchase of a fancy car. Dinner out was definitely called for.

First, though, a cheeky cocktail at Hix Soho, which is danger of becoming a serious contender for favourite central London bar. With its pressed tin ceiling, quirkily low bar and subtle lighting, it would be a pleasing spot even without the bar billiards table. But there's more...

My paternal grandparents spent the 1960s managing The Squadron, an old-school seaside hotel in Ryde. By the time I started spending holidays on the Isle of Wight they had retired (the hotel has fallen a long way from grace these days) and moved to Seaview. All that remained of the Squadron years, setting aside for a minute the small matter of my parents' courtship, was an eclectic collection of glasses than bordered on the heroic. There were coloured glasses from drinks brands I seriously doubt ever actually existed, coupes and flutes of every conceivable geometry and more delicate umbrellas and adornments than you could swizzle a stick at. It was an Aladdin's Cave of kitsch, and one of the joys of my childhood. And I think I've just worked out where that crazy glass collection has ended up...

At Hix, although they do have traditional martini glasses somewhere in their collection, you're as likely to have your chilled spirit served in a sherry schooner or a port glass. (While we were there an actual Babycham coupe was sent out containing something far more grown up than the little bambi might have suggested.) Surprisingly, perhaps, and despite the unchilled glasses, the drinks are none the worse for this presentation, showing the value of a well-trained and confident mixologist. My schooner of Plymouth with its comical, and possibly record-breaking, twist of lemon may not have looked much like a traditional martini but it delivered on far more levels than any number of visually correct efforts I've been served elsewhere in the capital.

All too soon, it was off through the rain to Dean Street Townhouse for the main event. Beautiful room, lovely staff, busy but not crammed. All it needed was some halfway decent food and the evening could be considered a success. It was not to disappoint.

The menu is great: lots of vogue classics, a focus on seasonality, a veritable study in making a virtue out of old fashioned simple dishes - the signature dish is mince and boiled potatoes - served up with confidence in glam surroundings. To get away with this sort of thing the execution has to be spot on, and it's hard to judge that on a single visit. But when that visit is on one of the busiest and most high pressure nights of the year it seems a fair test and it's one that the Townhouse passed with flying colours.

A warm salad of rabbit, black pudding and scotch quails eggs was beautifully balanced, the richness of the meaty elements cut through by a sharp dressing and some quills of bitter chicory. Lovely. Antonia (choosing from the unadvertised vegetarian menu) started with a caramelised onion tart topped with a perfectly poached egg. Simple but effective, and praised far more highly than is usually the case for such a regular vegetarian fall-back option. This was followed by a main course macaroni cheese (which looked fab) and a lemon sole meuniere for me, which was (and I know I'm stealing from Masterchef here but sometimes there's no other way)... Cooked. To. Perfection. The only gripe was the pathetic bowl of buttered greens: barely more than a spoonful and yours for a cool £3.75. A bit naughty that.

We skipped pudding, feeling the remainder of our evening would be better spent walking over to Covent Garden and having a final snifter at Rules, still the holder of the favourite bar title. And we were right. More quirky glasses (this time, one feels, a bit more studied), more excellent mixing, and the third sumptuous room of the night. In fact if there are three better rooms in London than these three then I want to know about them.

23/11/2009

Last Sunday's Blaggers' Banquet was nothing short of a triumph, and a credit to Sig and Niamh for their all their hard work in taking a group of bloggers with little in common except a certain keenness for food and drink, and turning them into what passed for a halfway respectable restaurant crew. Particular respect to Niamh, who was have a pretty awful time of it in her private life but kept this all to herself and put on the bravest of faces throughout a very busy day and a hectic service.

My day started, as most of the crew's seemed to have done, with a hangover: we were all, it seemed, determined to recreate the authentic restaurant worker experience. But after a restorative fry-up and I took myself to Shoreditch to find assorted other bloggers milling around the first of what would be dozens of boxes of blagged goods. I had come rather late to the blagging effort but at the eleventh hour I had persuaded Sillfield Farm to part with a brace of plump chickens and a pound or so of sausages. When the scale of other people's blagging became clear (20kg of meat from Donald Russell anyone?) this meagre offering was starting to look a bit derisory, and I decided I'd better throw myself into the fray and make myself as useful as possible to make up for my laughable effort.

I was nominally there to reprise the many hours of my youth spent behind bars but there were at least two others already sorting through the crazy amount of blagged booze, so when a call went up from the kitchen for extra volunteers I stepped forward. There followed a brilliant few hours in Hawksmoor's tiny kitchen, peeling carrots and potatoes, prepping leeks, braving and shaving fingertips on the mandolin and working through two of the three stages of the triple-cooked chips that would eventually grace plates in the evening. Oh, and making parsnip crisps. Who knew chopping veg and deep-frying could be so rewarding?

As dusk fell it dawned on us that punters would be arriving soon, so a now-full complement of bloggers swung into action clearing away the remaining boxes, transferring copious amounts of treats to the goodie bags our lucky customers would be taking home, polishing wine glasses and laying tables. I met the rest of the bar team and we worked out what drinks we'd be serving. The full list would include champagne, quince champagne cocktails, Sipsmith gin and vodka martinis and obscene amounts of wine and beer. It was about this time that one of our number invented what quickly became known as the Blagger-tini, a surprisingly palatable affair based on vodka, balsamic Galliano and Chegworth Valley apple and raspberry juice, garnished (if you were lucky) with lemon and basil. So much more than the sum of its parts...

After that there was very little time to think... 50-odd paying customers duly arrived - possibly just outnumbering the bloggers - and were treated first to champers, canapes and cocktails and then to a hearty feast that included, among other things, monkfish tartare, Mexican beef stew, Lancashire hotpot, buffalo steaks, boob-shaped jellies, chocolate fondants and stupendous quantities of cheese. From my vantage point at the bar, in between mixing crazy numbers of martinis, it was clear that both the kitchen brigade and the front of house crew were doing a sterling job. Given that very few of them had professional experience this was some achievement and a testament both to the orgnisation and skill of the team leaders and the enthusiasm and commitment of everyone involved.

After a prize draw and an entertaining auction during which Fire & Knives editor Tim Hayward efficiently turned further blagged goods into a load more money for Action Against Hunger the guests and their goodie bags began to leave. The bloggers all mucked in in an effort to return the restaurant to something close to respectability, and I managed to make myself my first (official) martini of the evening with the last measures of gin... only for one over-efficient bar worker (I'm talking about you, Hayward) to tidy it up.

As for that brace of chickens, it turns out they were vital for both an incredible stock and some delicate canapes made from the skin. The fate of the sausages is less certain but I like to think they fed the early shift at Hawksmoor in the morning.

It was a hell of night and a great effort from everyone involved. And fortunately (for you) there's still time to get involved. Blagged items and promises are still coming and new items are going up for auction every day. So get yourself to eBay now for some imaginative - and worthy - Christmas shopping.

09/11/2009

Wherever Pierre Koffman goes, it seems, London's food bloggers will follow. Not content with flocking in great numbers to Selfridges during his three-week stint in a marquee on the roof, we are also set to emulate his new-found taste for running temporary restaurants (if not, perhaps, his skill in the kitchen). For your chance to put a few faces to a few names, to marvel at their barefaced blagging skills and to witness their comeuppance as they attempt to work at what they're so happy to criticise in their spare time, you need to get yourself to Hawksmoor for dinner next Sunday.

Hawksmoor, the Shoreditch steak joint pretty much universally praised among food bloggers (and therefore perhaps the only viable option for such largesse) has agreed to turn over its premises to a brigade of one-hit-wonder restaurateurs made up of those self same bloggers. The inaugural Blaggers' Banquet, organised by Niamh from Eat Like a Girl, will be a five-course dinner, complete with matching drinks, devised, cooked, served and (if we're still standing) tidied away by food and drink bloggers.

As the name of the evening suggests, all the food and drink served will have been sourced through that relatively recent addition to the food bloggers' armoury: blagging. Producers, farmers, importers and wholesalers up and down the country have been cajoled into supporting the venture, the proceeds of which will go to Action Against Hunger. Those items not destined for consumption (look out for some rare signed cookbooks and some highly desirable kitchen equipment) will be put up for auction both on the night and online over the following weeks for the benefit of those who can't make it.

To book your slot at what promises to be an interesting evening, not least for the spectacle of yours truly trying to remember how to drive a Gaggia, go to eBay and get bidding. A limited number of tickets are being sold in pairs (plus one five-top) for £75 a head, after which the final five pairs will go to highest bidder. Good luck, and maybe see you on Sunday.

27/10/2009

So having been slightly snotty about the Selfridges pop-up restaurant at the end of my Rules review, of course I did actually go in the end. And it was pretty good, a fitting 40th birthday present for my friend Mark, who must be beginning to think I have a one-track, three-star mind when it comes to organising celebrations to mark significant life events. Fortunately for my wallet I don't think he's got any more on the horizon.

I won't keep you long with this write-up, partly because there's only so much you can/should say about a restaurant whose very existence is so ephemeral but mostly because I have a backlog of other places I need to write about and frankly, if you haven't been already the chances are you ain't going to by the end of the week. Although stay tuned if you are keen, I may be able to help.

Anyway, for anyone who's been living in splendid isolation for the last couple of months, a temporary restaurant in a marquee on the roof of Selfridges marked the return to London of chef legend Pierre Koffman, the first winner of three Michelin stars in a UK restaurant. He retired in the early 90s, closing Tante Claire and maintaining his mystique by staying largely out of the way, aside from occasional spots as a special guest to be cooked for on MasterChef. Meanwhile Gordon Ramsay, now with his own three stars on Royal Hospital Road has spent those years collecting improbable numbers of further baubles apparently without ever being off the box. Have a guess who's more popular among the foodie fraternity...

If you'd been at Selfridge's two weeks ago you wouldn't have needed to. It was like a who's who of food bloggers up there, with a couple of bona fide journalists thrown in for good measure. Pierre's wife Claire could scarcely believe how many big cameras get taken out to dinner these days. Mind you when she was last front-of-house mobile phones were the improbably bulky preserve of Noel Edmonds (who did he find to talk to?) and the coolest camera going may have looked like this, so perhaps things have moved on a bit...

Anyway, we had excellent quality food, including a fancy take on a prawn cocktail (with lobsters, natch), the famous pig's trotter stuffed with sweetbreads (mainly made famous by Marco Pierre White, but that's not bad as far as tributes go) and a fantastically deep hare creation, which seemed to be a clear winner. I claim the prize for dessert, though, with a sublime pistachio soufflé.

Service was very good, contrary to the experience of several others who went that week. I suspect this had less to do with having a Guardian journalist on our table and more to do with the fact that it had only been open a couple of days. Given that some restaurants spend months or even years perfecting their service it's hardly surprising that one only open for a 21 days in total can have its inconsistencies. And, yes, we did get petit fours (another source of confusion and contention among jealous rivals that week).

Overall, it was a lot of fun. A slightly surreal taste of what three-star restaurant dining might have been like 20-odd years ago but not of three-star dining today, if only because of the random service and the fact that you're dining in a tent. But certainly a fun night out, especially with the addition of a few cocktails at Claridge's afterwards.

At £75 for three courses it's a fair whack, but the fact that it's Koffman at the helm means this is a very rare opportunity and, in my book at least, it definitely also qualified as a treat.

If you want to sample this for yourself I have a lunch for two booked on Friday (30 Oct) and I'm not going to be able to make it. Leave a comment with an email address (I won't publish it) and I'll let you have the details.

13/10/2009

It isn't the fact that they churn their own butter and cure their own ham that makes The Sportsman such a treat. They do, as it happens, and they do so very well, the butter balancing natural milky lusciousness with the tangy pinch of salt from the local marshes, and the ham dense and - there's no other word for it - rustic. But, while welcome and pretty rare, such self sufficiencies can't be the reason this Seasalter pub is such a foodie Mecca.

It's also not down to the rest of the sourcing policy, which sees most of the ingredients passing through Stephen Harris's kitchen coming from the pub's own veg patch, one or two local farms and the surrounding sea. Laudable, once again, for sure, but hardly unusual: no dining establishment worth its locally-sourced organic salt composes its menu without some sort of back story these days. That alone wouldn't make it worth the trip (quite a trip, in my case).

It's not even the quality of the cooking, that makes The Sportsman stand out, excellent though it is. The good folk at Michelin certainly think so, having awarded it a star in this year's guide. But again, that alone doesn't make The Sportsman stand out.

The fact is that the cooking and the attention to local and seasonal detail would be rightly praised anywhere. What makes The Sportsman such a special place is that it remains a pub. I can't believe there are many other Michelin-starred kitchens operating in such relaxed, convivial establishments; where one man and his dog are still welcome at the bar for a pint and a chat; where walkers stop off for refreshment and Walkers deliver crisps during service; where pubby sensibilities keep the wine mark-ups at criminally low levels and a multi-course tasting menu will set you back just £55. If there are other places like this on Michelin's map I need to find them.

Frankly, after the journey I had from South East London The Sportsman was going to have to deliver. We'd been advised to take a noon booking to get the most out of a leisurely lunch, which for me meant getting a train to Victoria at about 9am to join the rest of the party. Getting up itself was something of a challenge after one too many Corpse Revivers in Callooh Callay the night before, but I was nothing if not determined and hauled my slightly shaky soul to the platforim just in time. There then followed a catalogue of disasters too complex to go into right now involving ticket inspectors and train failures, low phone batteries and scary minicabs, after which I met my co-lunchers at Bromley South, £30 poorer but – bizarrely – on the right train. An hour and a half and another cab later we were deposited outside the Sportsman. I was in serious need of a bloody Mary.

And a fine BM it was too, not least because I got to administer the spices myself, a lengthy procedure that drew worried gasps from the bar-staff but which I knew was the only answer. Reader, I rallied then.

First up on our multi-course journey were new-season natives with crunchy disks of chorizo. These were a proper test of my recovery and one that I'm happy to say I took in my stride. Stephen was almost apologetic that these weren't as local as he'd have liked (I forget where they came from but it wasn't far) but he needn't have worried. Briny, creamy and silky, with welcome additional flavour and texture from the sausage. Lovely.

These were followed by a duo of additional treats: delicately thin pork scratchings that yielded beautifully in the mouth after an initial thrilling crunch and squares of pickled herring and gooseberry jelly on rye bread.

Next up, more oysters, this time delicately poached with gooseberry granita and Jersey cream. Wrong on so many different levels but a triumph in practice. One of my favourites.

An array of homemade bread appeared from nowhere, a thinly veiled excuse to sample that excellent butter. The bread was also great in its own right.

And then this beautiful slipsole in seaweed butter materialised in front of us. An absolute winner of a dish, stupidly simple but simply perfect, the flesh reluctantly yielding from the bones and melting in the mouth with more of that butter. Fabulous.

Crab risotto delivered on just about every level: intense bisquey flavour from the stock, perfect rice, exactly the right sized portions and a beautiful presentation that made excellent use of the white and dark meat. For many around the table – and it's hard to argue – this was the dish of the day.

Another contender followed, though, this time plump fillets from a turbot, landed the previous day, on a bed of wilted greens with an inky sauce based on (I think) smoked herring roe.

The rustic ham (I think this may have arrived before the turbot, but who's counting?). Not the most refined ham you'll ever taste but excellent use of the one bit of the pig – the legs – that Stephen was struggling to make best use of. Chewy, salty and very moreish.

As a little extra treat Stephen brought us out some breast of lamb Ste Menehould. This is something I've been meaning to make for myself so I know how much effort is involved. As Stephen himself predicted, it didn't meet with universal approval around the table but that was fine my me: I couldn't get enough of it!

The final savoury course was a duo of saltmarsh lamb: a cube of fabulously unctuous shoulder, with lovely papery skin, and a prettily pink chop. The runner beans they were resting on were sensational. Not something you often hear about the humble runner. Certainly not from me, anyway.

First up on the pudding trail was a blackberry sorbet lolly in a little cup of cake milk, which for the uninitiated is milk. Flavoured with cake. Good start.

The biggest of the desserts was also the least successful dish overall, both in its slightly overwrought construction and the in the texture of the main focus, a rather grainy apple parfait that had probably been over-chilled. Hints of salted caramel were good though.

Finally a glorious parade of goodies to finish: a rhubarb sorbet, a gooey chocolate and salted caramel mousse, a lemon and raspberry tart, a sugared plum and a cube of sponge cake doused in walnut liqueur. A lot of fun, and great way to finish.

After all that and a cheeky coffee we looked up to discover that a (very) good four and a half hours had passed. Fortunately that meant the tide had gone out and we could spend the next couple clambering over the dozens of groynes that keep the beach between Seasalter and Whitstable in check.

If anyone is daunted by the prospect of this testing trek after such a fine feast I can reassure you that there is another pub at the end of it where a fine pint of Harvey's will see you right. It's not as good as the pub at the start of the walk. mind. But then not many are.

22/09/2009

An early evening visit on Saturday to the very civilised Greenwich Picture House – "Will you be taking your drinks into the film with you...?" – on Saturday to see Julie and Julia, the biopic cum romcom about US cookery legend Julia Child and the homage New Yorker Julie Powell paid her in the shape of a year-long blog back in 2002/3. In the Julie/Julia Project Powell had the slightly bonkers plan to work and blog her way through all 536 recipes in Child's seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just twelve months. As someone who recently went four or five months between blog posts, I have to admire her dedication.

A few weeks ago I read the book of the blog, and enjoyed it. Naturally, the thought of someone finding fame and fortune from a food blog appealed, but what interested me more was the nature of the project itself. Ploughing through a hefty collection of recipes and describing what worked and what didn't; which ingredients were hard to find and which common ones got put to use in new ways; which new techniques were to become part of the regular kitchen repertoire and which would be dropped as soon as the relevant chapter was completed (aspics, mainly)... there was something heroic in the enterprise and something engaging in her personality and style. I maybe found it a little repetitive in the descriptions of various white-out episodes, and I thought it a little disingenuous to gloss over the fact that at some point the project clearly morphed from blog to book-deal, but there was enough foodie detail to keep me interested. I was keen to see how it would translate to the big screen.

The opening credits neatly capture the fact that Julie and Julia is "based on two true stories" and this is the first major difference. While Powell's book featured a few snippets from letters Julia Child and her husband Paul wrote back to the States from various slightly shady diplomatic postings in Europe and Asia, the film devotes at least half its narrative to Julia's journey from frustrated expat wife to a household name (in the US at least). And it does so very successfully too: Meryl Streep is fantastic as Julia Child, and clearly had an absolute hoot playing her, capturing the extraordinary voice and mannerisms pretty much perfectly (I had to check this on YouTube, not having been exposed to any of the original television programmes before). And you can't blame Nora Ephron for making such an effort on the Julia half of the project: it is after all, a great story, what with its glamorous Parisian backdrops and the slightly quirky way the great book seems to have come into being.

The modern-day New York story had very little of the glamour, especially as it oscillated between a scruffy apartment in Queens and a Downtown Manhattan still metaphorically smouldering after September 11, but it had the potential to be just as successful as a story. Unfortunately, it felt a bit as though those making the film cared a lot more for Julia than they did for Julie, painting the blogger's tale with far less colour and characterisation. In the book, for instance, (and presumably the blog), Julie's husband Eric is ever-present in the background, and while we don't get a lot of him personally, we learn enough from the part he plays in any number of escapades to understand why she thinks him a saint (the patron saint of washing up and gimlet making, presumably). In the film, however, Eric is a dweeb who suddenly throws a wobbly when Julie lets her obsession get the better of her. And just as suddenly forgets all about it. A pity.

And there's not enough cooking in the film for my taste, either. There are some good bits about the amount of butter used in French cooking, some entertaining squeamishness at the thought of boiling live lobsters and the famous boeuf bourguignon episode that proves slow cooking and vodka aren't necessarily the wisest combination. But we got next to nothing of the aspic fun, for instance, and Julie apparently managed to debone an entire duck (perhaps the most daunting episode in the entire book) with a single incision. These were frustrating omissions for someone who was mainly there for the food.

Of course I understand that this is not a feature length Nigella food porn adventure, and there's only so much room for such details, especially when you've hit on the brilliant wheeze of telling such a great second story alongside (drawing parallels with house moves, jobs, publishing ventures, dinner parties and so son). But when you think of some of the stuff that was artificially and pointlessly added in to the New York narrative (an entire set of characters seems to have been invented purely to draw a spurious additional parallel with Sex and the City) it seems a shame not to make the foodie element work a bit harder.

But then maybe that's the problem. I'm considering this film from so many different viewpoints – foodie, blogger, blog-reader, book-fan, frustrated writer – that the good old-fashioned filmgoer in me is struggling to see the wood for the trees. I'll do my best... With my most convincing objective hat on, I can recommend this as a light and yet moderately fulfilling film with enough foodie stuff and historical fact to lift it beyond a blah romcom, a few laugh-out-loud moments (although not as many as the lady a few seats along from us seemed to think) and an electric performance from Meryl Streep and her inner Child. The latter alone is reason enough to go.

Afterwards is was back next door to the Rivington Greenwich for welsh rarebit, sardines, steak, chips and a couple of bottles of wine. Lovely.

08/09/2009

After much dithering over how to round off a week on the Isle of Wight – because surely everyone needs a treat after they've been on holiday? – we decided that rather than blow several hundred quid on a combination of boutique hotels and Michelin starred restaurants we'd head back to London and make our own entertainment. If we'd been more organised we'd have engineered a long-promised return to Bailiffscourt (next time) but we'd left it too late, and in the end the London options more than made up for the lack of outdoor hot-tubs and walks on the beach. Well just about.

So on Saturday some last-minute investigation revealed that District 9 was showing at the Greenwich Picture House at an hour that gave us just enough time for a cheeky meal at the bar in the Rivington next door. Why we have only done this a couple of times before is utterly beyond me. It's surely the most perfect combination of food and culture you could possibly find. (I think I've answered my own question there: if there's any sort of contest food – and drink – tend to win over culture every time. Ah well, this time we got it about right and after a fabulous rare burger with rarebit topping and a pair of exemplary eggs Florentine we wandered next door for a couple of moderately harrowing hours of shaky camera prawn massacre. What's not to like?

The highlight of our home-treats weekend, though, was Sunday lunch at Le Café Anglais, Rowley Leigh's majestic emporium just off Queensway. We'd been once before when four of us had effortlessly racked up a bill of such impressive proportions that Antonia's dad hasn't spoken to us since (he was there, incidentally; he's not ostracising us on the basis of our spendthrift ways). It's not that LCA is expensive. Indeed if you managed to restrict yourself to the keenish set-price menus you could eat very well indeed for less than £40-odd a head (assuming you drink from the lower end of a long but manageable wine list). It's just that there's so much gloriously tempting stuff elsewhere on the menu that the chances of anyone actually picking the set menus must be vanishingly small. I'm sure it's happened once or twice. But not that sure.

You've got to love a restaurant that establishes a signature dish for itself – in this case Parmesan custard with anchovy toasts – and then sticks in on a list of hors d'euvres so that both you know and they know you're going to order it (and a couple of others like it) before you even think about having a "proper" starter. And then there's the list of proper starters themselves, which includes such temptations as smoked eel and bacon salad, and mains that include a relatively modestly priced grouse (£25 is practically a bargain compared with the cool £38 it was going for at Hix the other week). The set menu stood no chance.

As well as the Parmesan custard (which is as good as it sounds and surely as obligatory here as the roasted bone marrow is at St John), we snacked on some mackerel paté with a soft boiled egg (a good combination slightly undermined by the fact that we'd swapped toasts so I was spreading an already salty paté on those anchovy toasts) and some artichoke fritters (slightly odd these, a bit too rich in their breadcrumby batter). Meanwhile I was tucking into the beautifully dressed eel and bacon salad (more saltiness!) and we were both washing it all down with some perfect bloody Maries.

Mains were an omelette for the veggie half of the party, accompanied by a choice of quality sides, including a dauphinoise that ticked all the right cheesy, creamy and crunchy boxes. I went for the grouse (natch), which was a trifle underpowering for my taste. It was smartly presented on a copper platter with most of the usual accompaniments – game chips, red current jelly, bread sauce, gravy and watercress. Disappointingly, though, no dense liver on toast, an omission that seemed to work as an omen: the first half of the bird I tackled packed none of the punchy flavour I associate with grouse. To be fair, though, the second flank was much more on the mark, deeper in colour and almost metallic in taste. Might have been the way it was sitting in the oven or to do with where our friend picked up its fatal wound. Either way it was like a different bird. Not for the first time with grouse: a game of two halves.

After a blow-out like this, complete with a carafe (hurrah!) each of burgundy and Chablis and a couple of good espressos we were in no kind of condition for pudding. We called for the bill, reflected on opportunity to find good value in Notting Hill comprehensively passed up, and wandered happily out into the September sunshine. A perfect end to the holiday after all. Well done us.

16/04/2009

Very funny night last night. Slightly disappointing meal at Sitaaray, the Bollywood themed curry spot in Covent Garden. The gig at Sitaaray is a fixed price menu of grilled goodies and curries that - in theory - keep on coming till you've had enough. I've been once before and enjoyed it: the meats and fish were nicely grilled and well spiced. At under £20 for as much as you can manage, the prices were good; there was a full range of veggie options running alongside the meats and fish and the staff were enthusiastic and helpful, explaining the dishes as they were presenting them and offering us extra portions of anything we'd particularly enjoyed when we'd completed the full gamut of around a dozen standard morsels. All that and some jolly Bollywood dances running on a few tellies - what's not to like?

Last night, alas, was another story. The staff were interested only in finishing up as soon as possible. No explanations about what we were eating. No offers of extra courses. No joy. We made the best of it, pointedly ordering a second bottle of wine and some more of the very good mixed chicken tikka and the excellent paneer. But we were left with little doubt that all of the staff were desperate to be elsewhere, quite possibly working in another restaurant. And the price has gone up. Shame.

No matter: we finished the night in some style with a visit to CellarDoor, a funky little bar down by The Strand that glories in both its quirky address and its location in a converted public toilet. It's a great little bar, made to feel less little by mirrors on most of the surfaces. Excellent cocktails and a decent wine list mean you're sure of a pleasant tipple even if you struggle to find yourself somewhere to perch. Last night we did OK on that front, even bagging ourselves a table by the time we ordered a second bottle. Again.

When we arrived, brushing our way through the looping Casablanca projection (one of many quirky touches) a cabaret turn was in full swing. A camp singer was belting out tunes from Oliver! accompanied by a second chap on an electric piano. They later treated us to a clever segue from London Pride into London Calling, the Noel Coward delivery never slipping. It's amazing that somewhere so tiny can turn itself to live music so effectively (they do something clever with one of the booth seats apparently) but open mikes and more professional turns are a regular feature. Good stuff.

We left a little while after the final number, a raucous rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart, complete with lots of "turnarounds" deftly executed on a swivelly stool. And we felt flushed with success at having rescued an evening from mediocrity by simply spending a few pennies in what I'm afraid we still insist on calling "the toilet bar".